Posted
by
samzenpus
on Friday June 24, 2011 @09:40AM
from the now-90%-body-free dept.

cylonlover writes "Three young entrepreneurs have proposed a way of getting New Yorkers into the Hudson, East and/or Bronx Rivers. It's called the +Pool (Plus Pool) — a public swimming pool that would float in the river, allowing people to swim in filtered river water. River water would flow into the pool through permeable walls, which would be composed of three layers filtering out the river nasties."

My wife's Scandanavian ancestors came up with an answer to that. You beat each other with birch twigs in the sauna until jumping through a hole in the ice into freezing water begins to look like an attractive proposition. Once disabused of that insane notion, you crawl out and do it again.

I think the beating part would go over big with some elements of the New York population.

The Hudson and East Rivers don't smell much at all these days and many fish have returned. The filtering is practically unnecessary except after heavy rains. It's more or less the same water as Orchard Beach or Coney Island, which obviously have no filters and no one gets sick from those.

That's interesting because the New York City Triathlon's swim portion is right in the Hudson River. No one I've talked to has ever mentioned anything TOO bad about swimming in the Hudson. But as a lot, triathletes are generally too hard core to admit any suffering or unexplained skin growths.:)

They could use these magical three layers to filter farther upstream where likely several inconsiderate companies are flushing nasties into the river and make those companies pay for it. THEN people could swim in the river like they should be able to. Letting people put nasties into the river is the problem. Duh.

Magic solves everyone's problems. In this case the first layer (sediment filtration) is probably the only feasible layer on any scale. If the other two would even be possible the cost would grow exponentially, leaving you a pool costing more than a space shuttle.

They could use these magical three layers to filter farther upstream where likely several inconsiderate companies are flushing nasties into the river and make those companies pay for it. THEN people could swim in the river like they should be able to. Letting people put nasties into the river is the problem. Duh.

Good luck with that. Most of the ecological damage to the east river (including one of the largest and longest in duration oil spills in history) was done a long time ago by companies that no longer exist. Putting something up river would be ineffective as the riverbed has been contaminated in all directions for over a century.

Still, it's New York. If you care about whether or not something is clean, it's not where you live. The whole fucking city smells like rotting garbage and urine in the summer.

...and what exactly is the point? To separate the rich hedonists from a little more of their disposable income? I sure don't see those of us commoners being able to take "advantage" of such a ridiculous luxury.

By separating the rich hedonists from their money you can then employ waiters, pool cleaners, construction people, and pool designers plus hundreds of useless people in government to get the required permits.

So yes, that is the point. To get people to spend money.

Now of course we're both assuming that this will be a private pool and privately funded. What will really happen is that someone will make it a public project and build this instead of hiring a few more cops, repairing roads, or performing some oth

In the narrow sense, this seems like a reasonably clever, if not entirely novel solution; but in the broader sense it leaves me skeptical.

If your river has sufficiently high levels of pathogenic viruses and bacteria that it isn't swimmable, you should seriously consider pretending to be a first-world country for 15 minutes and check out this cool "sanitation systems, so you don't have to drink and swim in your own shit!" fad that all the cool civil engineers have been nattering on about since, oh, the Roman Empire or so...

If your river has sufficiently high levels of chemical nasties and heavy metals that it isn't swimmable, trusting a pool filter to remove them probably isn't the best idea, and maybe you should be doing something about the 'chemical plants upstream of major population centers' problem. Isn't that stuff supposed to be in New Jersey, anyway?

If your swimmers just can't handle the terror of a little silt or the normal flora of a watershed ecosystem, maybe they need a psych referral, not a pool filter.

If your river has sufficiently high levels of chemical nasties and heavy metals that it isn't swimmable, trusting a pool filter to remove them probably isn't the best idea, and maybe you should be doing something about the 'chemical plants upstream of major population centers' problem. Isn't that stuff supposed to be in New Jersey, anyway?

NYC is at the mouth of the Hudson. Everything on the river is upstream of it Moving NYC to the source is an idea, but I don't think it's going to go over well. The Hu

Even though the first world has cleaned up immensely over the past 50-70 years I have major doubts of there being a safely swimmable river flowing through ANY major city, first world or not. Being on the shore of a major lake or by the ocean doesn't count and cleanup takes multiple decades before levels of toxic chemicals fall enough to become safe again. Even with advanced sewage treatment all it takes is a rainstorm for the coastal waters to be off limits for a week or so.

Oh, I've taken more than a few unprotected impromptu-post-capsize swims in the dubiously swimmable waters of a river flowing through a major city... I did try to keep my mouth shut during the process, of course...

I've been dunked in Hudson, Niagra, St Laurent, Mississippi, Ohio, Thames & Seine without a problem but I've seen also seen people develop nasty skin rashes after swimming in waters that were nominally safe.

I give you Switzerland. Nearly all rivers there are impeccably clean, even the one going through their largest city, in which they organize a yearly swimming event (weather and flow rate permitting). See also http://www.zurika.com/2007/08/floating-through-city.html [zurika.com] (random hit on Google).

Zurich, Geneva, Toronto, Chicago or even Detroit don't make the cut as they are either directly on a lake or the river is directly fed from one. In Zurich's case it's called "Lake Zurich". Find a major city on a river that suffered heavy industrial polution during the early 20th century that has brought the river back to a consistently safe to swim state. There may be a few exceptions but either their rivers were never heavily polluted or they've done a herculean task over decades.

In the narrow sense, this seems like a reasonably clever, if not entirely novel solution; but in the broader sense it leaves me skeptical.

It's about New York City, you're supposed to be skeptical. At the very least.

If your river has sufficiently high levels of pathogenic viruses and bacteria that it isn't swimmable, you should seriously consider pretending to be a first-world country for 15 minutes and check out this cool "sanitation systems, so you don't have to drink and swim in your own shit!" fad that all the cool civil engineers have been nattering on about since, oh, the Roman Empire or so...

The Romans never had to deal with Wall Street. That's an enormous amount of shit.

If your river has sufficiently high levels of chemical nasties and heavy metals that it isn't swimmable, trusting a pool filter to remove them probably isn't the best idea, and maybe you should be doing something about the 'chemical plants upstream of major population centers' problem. Isn't that stuff supposed to be in New Jersey, anyway?

What russotto said. Nuking the petrochemical plant that is New Jersey would likely be a good idea. Maybe we can trade Moscow with the Russians.

If your swimmers just can't handle the terror of a little silt or the normal flora of a watershed ecosystem, maybe they need a psych referral, not a pool filter.

Again. We're talking about New York. The entire city IS a psych referral. Gone Bad.

If the pool IS the filter, how would you go about cleaning/changing the filters so they filter properly? Change the entire pool out? I can't think of any other way to do it. It's just like my reverse-osmosis water system. The filters clog, and need replacing or cleaning. There's no way to do that here.

The "East River" is what people outside of New York City like to call the Atlantic Ocean.

You can already go swimming in it, but as I understand it the idea here is to let you swim in the ocean without worrying about jellyfish, the tide pulling you out to sea, or the occasional shark frightening you.

You can also go swimming in the Hudson which is an actual river. There it is best to stay within the designated swimming areas mostly because it's relatively easy to get washed out to sea.

It is a better idea, only so much containment and junk has settled down into the sludge at the bottom of the rivers that the only way to get it out would be dredging the river (they've been dredging the Hudson for years). Problem is that dredging churns up so much of the contaminants that they are trying to remove, it almost isn't worth it.

On a more serious note, last time I docked my boat at a marina in NYC (on my way to the long island sound), not only was the water disgustingly dirty, but the smell was overbearing. The rest of my family stayed in a hotel the rest of the night while I roughed it out on the boat to keep an eye on things. In the morning, a garbage truck showed up to empty some of the large garbage bins out. When they lifted it up with the truck, the liquid sludge in the bottom of the bin started to leak out the bottom. They then drove it over to the edge, and let it empty into the river. I have never smelled a worse smell in my entire life.

I love NYC and NY in general. But swimming in the water down there? No thanks.

Maybe this is a dumb question, but what about something like the pool plus, except not in the river? I mean the swimming pool is an old idea, what the point of putting it in a river? Why not put it next to the river, treat the water river water with chlorine, put it in the pool, and dump the old water back into the river or just down the sewer?

Or they could just swim in the river like normal people. People swim in the hudson all the time, and it is a busy river for recreational boating. Absolutely nothing wrong with that water. City folk and other yuppie snobs like those who can afford or would want to live in the city see anything but clear water as dirty. News flash: Most rivers are murky and do not have great clarity, especially tidal rivers that are dredged for big shipping traffic.

Actually, the parts of the Hudson above NYC are fine. That water is clean when compared to the water that sits in the small bays and accumulates around the mouth to the long island sound. I grew up swimming in the Hudson up by Poughkeepsie and Kingston. It is fine up there. But down in the East River and that area? You would never get in that water. And if you do, I wouldn't want to be near you after you did;)

Yes, yes. Just like oncologists have "massively increase[d]" cancer diagnoses. I go to a chiropractor for certain injuries where experience tells me that I will get back to life-as-normal much faster with adjustments from the chiropractor than going to a normal doctor (whom I'm unlikely to get in to see within a week anyway) or just managing it on my own. That doesn't mean I believe half their crap, and I've never had any chiropractor use the term "subluxation" on me (I'd probably find a new chiropractor

Parody? Perhaps. Troll? Definitely. But, by Cthulhu's Tentacles, he is a damn fine one. Just look how many people swallow his bait hook, line and sinker in every single story. Getting his same pitch in on topic in lots of threads, mostly making FP and not even bragging about it. Dr Bob walks tall amongst trolls. He is a paragon of trolldom and a shining example for the young generation. I salute him.

Chiropractic was invented in 1895 by Canadian-born Daniel David Palmer; a medically unqualified layman. He had been a grocer before becoming a "magnetic healer" (transferring "healing energy" to patients by touching or waving hands over them) in Burlington, Iowa, USA.

Vaccines are a necessary item to cause herd immunity to diseases. We stop using them and things like small pox and polio and that sort return. It's your kind that is killing people and creating super diseases and you should be put on trial as the accomplice to murder that you are.

There was another man people called great spouting nonsensical gibberish too. They made a religion from his books called Scientology. That doesn't mean he still wasn't a crackpot though (hint: they both were)

Radioactivity is energy. You cannot measure it in volume. You could say something like a liter of radioactive waste, but of course that doesn't tell you how much radioactivity is involved, as you could have a very small amount of radioactive material in a liter of otherwise uninteresting water.

Chiropractic practitioners are glorified scam artists. Please do us all a favor and stop using posting your lies on every article, as there is no proof that anything you have claimed on here was even partially accurate. Chiropractors cannot help with cancer, this is a known fact. Chiropractors cannot fix chemical related illnesses, this is also a known fact.

Your entire field of study was created by a man with no medical knowledge who was attempting to make himself rich while pedaling voodooesque techniques,

Sodium carbonate is a food additive (E500) used as an acidity regulator, anti-caking agent, raising agent and stabilizer. It is one of the components of kansui, a solution of alkaline salts used to give ramen noodles their characteristic flavor and texture.[5][6] Sodium carbonate is also used in the production of sherbet powder. The cooling and fizzing sensation results from the endothermic reaction between sodium carbonate and a weak acid, commonly citric acid, releasing carbon dioxide gas, which occurs when the sherbet is moistened by saliva.

You know what? I'm not even going to bother looking up the rest of those chemical compounds.

Coming from a pool owner: most of those chemicals are all actually legit in the maintenance of a pool.- Chlorine kills algae- Bromine is used mostly in hot tubs and spas I think, I've never used it in our pool but see it for sale at the pool/spa/hot tub supplier.- Cyanuric Acid is stabilizer for the chlorine. It helps prevent sunlight from neutralizing the chlorine. "Stabilized Chlorine" has the acid included in the granules or pucks.- Sodium Bisulphate is an acid used to bring down high pH levels. Commonly

Coming from a pool owner: most of those chemicals are all actually legit in the maintenance of a pool.

No doubt. I was just pointing out that not only are they not hazardous to humans in levels found in swimming pools, but the last one at least is so non-hazardous (ok, nothing is 100% non-hazardous) that it's added to our food - it's basically about as hazardous as baking soda.

(And if ramen noodles have a toxic, deadly chemical in them, I'm in a heap of trouble. Though some would claim that MSG is pretty bad, so it's not like I eat them all the time.)

A pool in the hudson would be filled with a lot of dihydrogen monoxide [dhmo.org]. This might be the main hazard people will be exposed to.

Dihydrogen monoxide:

is called "hydroxyl acid", the substance is the major component of acid rain.
contributes to the "greenhouse effect".
may cause severe burns.
is fatal if inhaled.
contributes to the erosion of our natural landscape.
accelerates corrosion and rusting of many metals.
may cause electrical failures and decreased effectiveness of automobile brakes.
has been found in excised tumors of terminal cancer patients.

Despite the danger, dihydrogen monoxide is often used:

as an industrial solvent and coolant.
in nuclear power plants.
in the production of Styrofoam.
as a fire retardant.
in many forms of cruel animal research.
in the distribution of pesticides. Even after washing, produce remains contaminated by this chemical.
as an additive in certain "junk-foods" and other food products.

Dr. Bob, I fear it is attitudes and chiropractors that have these kinds of "theories" that give chiropractic medicine a bad name. If you can point to journals or actual scientific studies which support these theories then I would be less inclined to dismiss. My brother is a chiropractor and so I am very familiar with what they can and can't do for you and how they can really help you. Health education and all is great and a part of it, but baseless statements with no documentation is not a way to promote

Do you have any peer reviewed sources that have actually withstood real scientific scrutiny? NaturalNews is far from a credible source, and Journal of Vertebral subluxation research is obviously a biased source. As for the Dr, well this disclaimer kind of sums it up at the bottom of his page * These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease. If you are pregnant, nursing, taking medication, or have a me

Your insinuation that Chlorine is a carcinogin is not supported by science or even anecdotal experience.

The main problem with swimming pools & chlorine causing irritation is ironically caused by *not enough* chlorine, since the the chlorine combines with septic materials to form chloramines. which are highly irritating to people. Look it up on Wikipedia, its basically forms of ammonia.

In fact, most swimming pools would benefit from significantly higher levels of chlorine. It would be safer and cleaner.

Interesting, google search results is full of claims that chlorine kills, but most of those claims link directly to water filter sales. The most reliable of my finds says that rats and mice [berkeley.edu] are immune to chlorine. Someone ought run those tests on humans! Anyways, thanks for debunking that myth.

I think the issue with swimming pools is a combination of chloramines and poor pH balance.

The thing is, its very easy to keep pH & chlorine balanced, but pool companies like to make it appear complex. So most homeowners think its a process akin to turning lead into gold. Its not. 30 minutes a week with a pool will keep it clean.

A private pool should be shocked (superchlorination) once every two weeks or sooner if its extremely hot and you have a lot of people in the pool.

"Chiropractor-diagnosed illness in which the subluxation contained extraordinarily high levels of Chlorine"

This statement is so full of win I don't know where to start. so now subluxations are like sponges. got it. but manipulating the sponge will squeeze out the chlorine? will we see a mop bucket style squeezer at the next chiro-conference?

Chiro's can help with musculoskeletal problems in very similar fashion to physical therapy. everything else is snake oil.

No kidding. I think they should just make some full body bathing suits outta that stuff, and just let people swim in the river. It wont take long for the pool to be nastier than the river itself. Does it's filter work both ways?;)

GE Has done an excellent job at convincing the public that the EPA is trying to hurt the environment by trying to get the river cleaned up. I wouldn't worry about chemicals like PCB and stuff. GE says it is fine.

Nope. All of the pictures are from Brooklyn, with one exception which is from Governors Island. There are no bridges to NJ except the GW, which isn't featured, so all the shots with bridges are from Brooklyn. There is one picture from Williamsburg (or possibly Greenpoint) without a bridge, you can tell you are viewing the city from the east as the Chrysler building is to the right of the Empire State and closer to the camera.

I meant to NJ from "The City". To anyone not familiar with NYC, only Manhattan counts as "The City" to locals. I once rented a car from Hertz in Manhattan and handed the clerk a MD drivers license. She asked me, "Do you have an address in the city?" I figured she just wanted a local, not out-of-state address, so I gave her the address of the place I was staying in Brooklyn. She gives snorts and says, "No in 'The City'"! Evidently she was asking because Brooklyn and Manhattan have different tax rates for ren

she was asking because Brooklyn and Manhattan have different tax rates for rental cars

whaaaa??? Only tax there is MCTD tax on rental besides state and local tax. Local tax is same in every borough/county in NYC. Regardless it's in Manhattan or Brooklyn, it's same MCTD jurisdiction. However rental cars rates (not tax) do differ depending on where you rent it and return it between NYC 5 boroughs.

Yeah maybe it was the rental rate not the tax. This was a while ago, and no one has ever asked me that question since. I still have the same MD license.

The only time I ever felt screwed by Hertz was the time I specifically asked for a Subaru (it was snowing and I wanted the four wheel drive) and they gave me a Pontiac G6. I called them, confirmed they had it over the phone, and they promised to hold it for me. I even got there 30 minutes early. But no Subaru, instead I had to drive to Ithaca in a tiny li